Our trip was South of Tehran. Apparently in March the roads to the North may be blocked by snow. We took one internal flight from Tehran to Ahwaz and otherwise travelled hundreds of miles, driven by the largely imperturbable Ali. A cool head is desirable in Iranian traffic. We regularly saw cars doing U turns at crossroads, reversing along highways etc. and could well believe the phenomenal road-death figures. Ali kept calm and regularly supplied us with tea and coffee from the back of our mini-bus during our many long journeys. He took in good sport Paula’s efforts to get him to wear a white headscarf in solidarity on International Women’s Day – but wouldn’t.
Our entire trip hugged the Zagros mountain range, often seen as if floating on a band of dust or sand, first to our east and then, on the return leg to Tehran to our west.
The landscape went from scrub to the spectacular Lut desert near Kerman in the South with its wind sculpted peaks.
Paula of the Kaluts – hijab-less
Lorries now travel the old Silk Road, passing 16th century caravanserai, which retain the mystery of the age of Marco Polo. we visited one such – the restored Zein-o-Din on the journey between Kerman and Yazd, with its romantic settle beds.
Here and there we saw some salt lakes, fields of crops, had a glimpse of camels, some pistachio nut groves, still white and bare, some fruit trees, but mostly our sense was of the vast emptiness of this part of the great landmass of Iran.
A nuclear power station just off the road between Isfahan and Kashan was rather innocently half hidden by a bank of earth on the side of the highway with one visible gun tank posted nearby. This area of Natanz , according to the Lonely Planet guide, is the country’s major underground uranium enrichment plant. This was not pointed out to us – and in any case, it looked somehow quite innocent as breaks in the makeshift earth-bank gave us several views of the site. The Persian way of disguise, maybe?
Itinerant in Iran 